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kdavid
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VmWare HW config for MK ROS

Sat Oct 08, 2011 5:30 pm

Hello,

I want virtualize 14 RB 1000 on PC. What HW config ar you prefering for me?

On each RB 1000 is around 300 customer, bandwidth on each box is around 50 megs. Firewall + mange + queue rules sumary is around thousand/box.
One from this routers is for BGP with capacity 500 Mbits without any fw, mangle or queue rule with 7 thousand routes. I prefere 4 GB ram from futures reason, maybe we will have 2x full bgp for redundancy

I prefer 2 CPU Xeon Quad core, 4 GB RAM, 2x 120 GB SATA3 SSD Disk in RAID 1, 2x 10 GB Ethernet --- connected by trunk to Vlan switches to each interface, 2x Power supply.

Try to think that budget is unlimited. (Dont think in cisco or in other vendors please :-D , only MK solution, thanks :-D )

Which version of VmWare are you prefering fom me? Or will you prefere RAD5 or RAID 10.

Thanx a lot!

Dave
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Re: VmWare HW config for MK ROS

Mon Oct 10, 2011 10:49 am

i would suggest to discard the vmware solution:
RouterOS doesn't allow to install any 3rd party driver on his system, and vmware requires his network tools to be installed to emulate network interfaces properly. Without those drivers the virtual machine will work, but his throughput computing is limited to around 30-40mbit. If your virtual Routers will need to manage only 10mbits each, you might have no problems.
Tested on real life :lol:
 
sigxcpu
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Re: VmWare HW config for MK ROS

Mon Oct 10, 2011 10:59 am

I've installed RouterOS inside VMware and I've got 600Mbit outside the hypervisor and 1.9Gbit between two RouterOS instances inside the same machine.
The hypervisor was an old Opteron at 2.2Ghz (around 2005). IBM Blade LS20, to be specific.

How did you get 40Mbit only?
 
kdavid
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Re: VmWare HW config for MK ROS

Mon Oct 10, 2011 11:21 am

Which version of vmware are u using?esx4 ?
 
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janisk
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Re: VmWare HW config for MK ROS

Mon Oct 10, 2011 1:18 pm

if you emulate intel card with e1000 you should be fine. however virtualization adds overhead. With hwardware virtualization support it is better, bust still, compared to HW vs virtualized on same metal, virtaulization will be a bit slower.

My suggestion would be to make core router full hardware (QoS, main routing) and then create one host for virtual routers where you could add server for required services, or router for customer etc.

also, AFAIK vmware tools are required for better monitoring of the guest system, not about optimizing interfaces and stuff, but i can be mistaken.
 
timberwolf
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Re: VmWare HW config for MK ROS

Mon Oct 10, 2011 2:43 pm

also, AFAIK vmware tools are required for better monitoring of the guest system, not about optimizing interfaces and stuff, but i can be mistaken.
That's correct, in the case of Windows, and sone Linuxes the VMware Tools add support for the VMXNET3 interface, which is paravirtualized and much faster then the e1000 emulation. Ifthe ROS Linux Kernel supports this interface out of the box, than no VMware Tools are needed for high-perfomance networking.
 
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Re: VmWare HW config for MK ROS

Mon Oct 10, 2011 3:08 pm

Then i apologize for my misleading.
I didn't run it in para-virtualization enviorment, but only as virtual machines, which caused this low througput.
I'm aware that everything works better in para-virtualization.
 
kdavid
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Re: VmWare HW config for MK ROS

Mon Oct 10, 2011 3:46 pm

also, AFAIK vmware tools are required for better monitoring of the guest system, not about optimizing interfaces and stuff, but i can be mistaken.
That's correct, in the case of Windows, and sone Linuxes the VMware Tools add support for the VMXNET3 interface, which is paravirtualized and much faster then the e1000 emulation. Ifthe ROS Linux Kernel supports this interface out of the box, than no VMware Tools are needed for high-perfomance networking.
VMXNET3 is not working for me on ESX 4.1
 
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pekr
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Re: VmWare HW config for MK ROS

Mon Oct 17, 2011 4:11 pm

It was quite long time since I last posted. I wanted to look into virtualization, because I want to move my ClearOS Linux box on main site. And so I thought, that I might set-it-up in virtualised environment on a new machine, adding a back-up ROS, using VRRP.

So my set-up would be:

1. box - HW based real ROS 5.7 installation, main router.
2. box - vmware, virtualizec 2 machines - ROS 5.7 main router backup in VRRP mode, second machine ClearOS Linux

Would that solution work? I just learned Xen is not more supported within ROS, and I am not sure it is suitable to install ClearOS Linux server as a KVM host to ROS?

PS: sorry for stealing a thread a bit ...

Thanks,
Petr
 
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janisk
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Re: VmWare HW config for MK ROS

Mon Oct 17, 2011 4:20 pm

any linux distro with KVM running can be as a host system for RouterOS. If it is not running out of the box, adjust CPU settings to get it running (license will be required for eaech guest).

So you can just install linux as host, and run your VRRP backup as KVM guest there.

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